Jun 2, 2026 · 27 min · 10 segments
Complex Animal Networks (start time: 7:17) As humans, we’re all familiar with, as we live in and are members of, nations. But most of us don’t think of non-human species, be they tiny ants or beavers…
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Ryan HulingGuestSusan MoranHost
Joel ParkerHostShelley Schlender
The last person on the moon was Eugene Cernan, a commander of NASA's Apollo 17 mission, who stepped off the lunar surface on December 14th, 1972.
After a pause of several decades, NASA restarted plans for human exploration of the moon, most recently with the initiation of the Artemis program in 2017.
The Artemis II mission flew around the moon in April of this year, with the ultimate goal of the Artemis program to not just have humans walk on the moon, but to build a permanent moon base.
Plans are for this lunar outpost to be built near the moon's south pole over the next decade.
Last week, NASA announced contracts for companies to build uncrewed cargo ships and lunar rovers for astronauts to drive on the moon.
One of these contracts will go to Lunar Outpost, a company based in Golden, Colorado.
NASA is awarding $220 million for Lunar Outpost to develop and deliver a lunar rover to provide transportation for crews expected to establish the moon base.
The rover, named Pegasus, incorporates Apollo heritage technologies, and it's designed to be operational up to a year and capable of manual, autonomous, or even remotely operated driving at speeds of the breakneck speed of more than nine miles per hour.
NASA says that over the next 18 months, Lunar Outpost and another company, Astrolab, will finalize rover designs, conduct crewed evaluations, and qualify flight units for operational readiness.
These lunar terrain vehicles, or LTVs, will be used for autonomous traverses, terrain preparations, scientific investigations, technology demonstrations, and astronaut transport.
These rovers are just part of the infrastructure that will be necessary to enable long-term human habitation and exploration of the moon, which will also include fixed and even mobile habitation structures, long-duration power systems, solar and nuclear, and technologies to obtain water and oxygen from lunar ice for human needs and fuel.
Most people who use their brains know about the time-honored health adage, "You are what you eat." Just as important is the less well-known adage, "You are what you don't excrete." Our long-term health depends on how efficiently our bodies eliminate metabolic waste and toxins.
Brain scientists have traditionally studied brain excretion by injecting cerebral spinal fluid with a mildly irritating tracer chemical called gadolinium.
MRI scans show that the brain flushes that out fast every way it can, largely to lymph nodes located in the neck.
Scientists at San Francisco's Gladstone Institutes wondered, is gadolinium's fast elimination pathway the brain's normal day-to-day way to send out the trash? To get an answer, Gladstone scientists engineered a much less irritating tracer, a fluorescent protein called ZsGreen.
It turns out normal elimination pathways don't rely on the neck lymph nodes, but instead use a number of sites that include immune cell checkpoints so the body can analyze the toxins as they leave the brain.
Also, during a fever-like state, many brain toxins go out super fast, for instance, to the bloodstream.
However, in lab mice bred to mimic Alzheimer's disease, brain toxins stayed stuck within the brain.
The scientists hope their more detailed way to study normal toxin excretion will lead to a better understanding of how our brains take out the trash so we humans can better use our brains to help it happen.
The last person on the moon was Eugene Cernan, a commander of NASA's Apollo 17 mission, who stepped off the lunar surface on December 14th, 1972.
After a pause of several decades, NASA restarted plans for human exploration of the moon, most recently with the initiation of the Artemis program in 2017.
The Artemis II mission flew around the moon in April of this year, with the ultimate goal of the Artemis program to not just have humans walk on the moon, but to build a permanent moon base.
Plans are for this lunar outpost to be built near the moon's south pole over the next decade.
Last week, NASA announced contracts for companies to build uncrewed cargo ships and lunar rovers for astronauts to drive on the moon.
One of these contracts will go to Lunar Outpost, a company based in Golden, Colorado.
NASA is awarding $220 million for Lunar Outpost to develop and deliver a lunar rover to provide transportation for crews expected to establish the moon base.
The rover, named Pegasus, incorporates Apollo heritage technologies, and it's designed to be operational up to a year and capable of manual, autonomous, or even remotely operated driving at speeds of the breakneck speed of more than nine miles per hour.
NASA says that over the next 18 months, Lunar Outpost and another company, Astrolab, will finalize rover designs, conduct crewed evaluations, and qualify flight units for operational readiness.
These lunar terrain vehicles, or LTVs, will be used for autonomous traverses, terrain preparations, scientific investigations, technology demonstrations, and astronaut transport.
These rovers are just part of the infrastructure that will be necessary to enable long-term human habitation and exploration of the moon, which will also include fixed and even mobile habitation structures, long-duration power systems, solar and nuclear, and technologies to obtain water and oxygen from lunar ice for human needs and fuel.
Most people who use their brains know about the time-honored health adage, "You are what you eat." Just as important is the less well-known adage, "You are what you don't excrete." Our long-term health depends on how efficiently our bodies eliminate metabolic waste and toxins.
Brain scientists have traditionally studied brain excretion by injecting cerebral spinal fluid with a mildly irritating tracer chemical called gadolinium.
MRI scans show that the brain flushes that out fast every way it can, largely to lymph nodes located in the neck.
Scientists at San Francisco's Gladstone Institutes wondered, is gadolinium's fast elimination pathway the brain's normal day-to-day way to send out the trash? To get an answer, Gladstone scientists engineered a much less irritating tracer, a fluorescent protein called ZsGreen.
It turns out normal elimination pathways don't rely on the neck lymph nodes, but instead use a number of sites that include immune cell checkpoints so the body can analyze the toxins as they leave the brain.
Also, during a fever-like state, many brain toxins go out super fast, for instance, to the bloodstream.
However, in lab mice bred to mimic Alzheimer's disease, brain toxins stayed stuck within the brain.
The scientists hope their more detailed way to study normal toxin excretion will lead to a better understanding of how our brains take out the trash so we humans can better use our brains to help it happen.
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